As Chapter 5 details, the theatrical promise of courtliness, prestige, and technological innovation attracted talented men and women who sought careers as dramatists. The duopoly, however, severely limited their opportunities, as did the ever growing backlog of old plays. After 1682, only one company remained to which they could sell their product, and overburdened payrolls consumed budgets that could otherwise be spent on new play development. Dramatists thus found themselves in the contradictory position of, on the one hand, affecting the gentility necessary for belonging to this exclusive cultural enterprise, and, on the other, chasing after diminishing opportunities like any common hack. And, finally, the theatre’s embrace of luxury and innovation made scarce another limited resource over which dramatists now competed: sumptuous scenic effects to adorn their scripts. By the end of the century, so deeply felt was disaffection with working conditions that few literary-minded writers took up drama as a profession, thereby establishing a pattern that would continue well into the eighteenth century.

Rather than focusing on dramaturgical or thematic developments in the post-war era, this chapter traces the changes experienced by playwrights in their practical working conditions. It begins by disputing widespread arguments against the prominence of playwriting in British theatre (that it is literary, logocentric, and individualistic). It then explores changes in play publishing, which helped raise the cultural profile of the playwright while also forming a new kind of dramatic canon; the industrial conditions in which playwrights have worked, which were precarious for the first thirty years since 1945 but were decisively transformed in the late seventies by an effective campaign of unionisation and collective bargaining; and the growing culture of play development, which has had mixed results, but which, at its best, helps demystify playwriting as a cultural practice, making it more accessible and helping to shepherd new plays and playwrights into being.

This coda places Brian Friel and Tom Murphy in dialogue in order to identify important distinctions and resemblances between two of Ireland’s most important playwrights. Friel is frequently considered more accessible but also more conservative; Murphy is generally described as being more bleak and also more innovative. The article acknowledges and explains the partial validity of those evaluations but also demonstrates their limitations, pointing to examples of Friel’s engagement in experimental practice as well as Murphy’s occasional fidelity to conservative forms (such as tragedy) and tropes (such as the Irish country kitchen). It also points to important overlaps in their interaction with key companies such as Field Day and Druid Theatre. It concludes that Murphy and Friel have more in common than is realised, and that those resemblances can be seen as evidence of a dialogic relationship, whereby the innovations of one opened up new pathways for the other.